The new sheriff in town: New AD talks about challenges of taking charge of Utah State’s athletic department
There’s a new sheriff in town.
Scott Barnes has been on the job for Aggie Athletics since university President Stan Albrecht named him director of athletics on March 7. Barnes, a Fresno State graduate, calls the shots from a corner office in the Smith Spectrum, where he recently met with The Utah Statesman for a few minutes.
Barnes played pro basketball in Germany for two years after finishing his career for the Bulldogs.
“I ended up going over on crutches and coming back on crutches,” Barnes said self-deprecatingly of his experience in Europe.
When he returned to the states, Barnes started coaching high school and working in the financial services industry. He said he thought he wanted to coach until he realized that “the time away from family and the travels wasn’t conducive to how I saw myself living.”
Barnes’ big break came when he got an opportunity to be the general manager of the Fresno Flames World Basketball League franchise.
“I got to start at a fairly high level and cut my teeth,” Barnes said.
From there, Barnes went on to hold administrative positions at Iowa State, the University of Washington, Pacific and the University of San Diego. He was also athletics director at Humboldt State and Eastern Washington. Most recently he was senior associate athletics director for advancement for the Huskies, where he ran all external operations for athletics-including fundraising, ticket sales, multimedia rights management, corporate sponsorships, marketing, event promotion, communications services and Web site management.
Barnes said he first heard about the job opening Randy Spetman’s departure for Florida State created from Western Athletic Conference chief Karl Benson.
“The conference commissioner had mentioned it,” Barnes explained. “Obviously any job at the I-A level in particular but any job that opens, folks in our industry, everyone knows. I knew a little bit about Utah State from afar, but as I learned more about the leadership of the university, President Albrecht’s leadership and the team he had put together, I got more intrigued in the position.”
One of the resources Barnes used as he was looking into the job offer from USU was outgoing AD Spetman.
“We actually talked as I researched the opportunity here,” Barnes said. “He was helpful in sort of painting a picture of where the opportunities and issues were here.”
Barnes said people have asked him why he chose Utah State. He answers them thusly: “In our business, it’s really hard to bring your career aspirations, family and geography into one job and I think we got that. This was a good fit for me for the next step in my career. Family-wise, we were looking for a small college town and geography-wise we wanted to stay west. The unique opportunities that were presented here made it all come together.”
Current students interested in athletics administration enjoy advantages he didn’t have, Barnes said.
“When I was coming into the business there wasn’t a specific road map,” Barnes said. “Nowadays there are some very sophisticated sports management programs, undergrad and graduate degree programs that can give you a really good start on the classroom content of what the career is like. When I was coming through it was really more the former coach that retired out of coaching and took the AD job.”
Now that he’s an Aggie, Barnes will be spending his time in the immediate future conducting a 90-day assessment of USU athletics. He’ll be meeting one-on-one with every staff member, as well as community leaders, institution leaders, and students. Barnes said he’ll be conducting his assessment on every level, which means “looking at it in a few different ways. One is our budget situation. Our academic service area, we’re going to look at our development and external operations, and the student-athlete experience, how we’re delivering in that regard.
“We’ve got to be really mindful that we have a sense of urgency around things every day but we can’t let that sense of urgency keep us from long-term strategies,” Barnes continued.
Although he uses the polite word “resources,” it’s clear that a large portion of Barnes’ time in the foreseeable future will be spent raising money.
“A big part of our job will be working with our athletic development staff to create new revenue streams and to raise major gifts of capital improvements, this north end zone being the first one,” he said. “As I look at what the first few years look like, creating and developing new resources will be a big part of our job.”
As to USU’s downtrodden football program, Barnes voiced unequivocal support for head coach Brent Guy.
“I think we need to give Brent the tools and resources he needs to succeed,” Barnes said. “Like we will with all of our coaches, as we assess our opportunities and issues our priority will be to deliver more resources so that all of our programs can be successful in the WAC and beyond. We will focus on football from the standpoint that as we look at new revenue streams, football has the biggest growth opportunity. We’re going to try to concentrate on helping Brent be successful on the football field and in the classroom.”
Barnes is also working to improve attendance at football games in Romney Stadium.
“It’s critical that we find new ways to bring people to our venue and not only bring people to our venue but provide an excellent fan experience so that they come back. We’re working on that now,” Barnes said.
-graham.terry@aggiemail.usu.edu